model life tables are a key methodological tool for the study of mortality, especially in countries where statistics are incomplete. the tables published by the united nations in 1982 paved the way for considerable progress in this field. now that more complete and reliable data are available, the use and interpretation of these tables can be critically assessed. zhongwei zhao shows here that m...

OBJECTIVES This report presents complete period life tables by Hispanic origin, race for the non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black populations, and sex for the United States based on age-specific death rates in 2006. METHODS The methods used to estimate the probability of death for ages 0-80 for the Hispanic population and 0-65 for the non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black populations...

Life expectancy, that is the mean age at death in a life table, is the most common measure used to describe and compare mortality distributions. Alternatives to life expectancy that have been proposed so far have also referred to only a single parameter of the mortality distribution. We propose to study mortality distributions by applying Silber’s concept of the Equivalent Length of Life (ELL),...

Quasi-life tables, in which the data arise from many concurrent, independent, discrete-time renewal processes, were defined by Baxter (1994, Biometrika 81:567-577), who outlined some methods for estimation. The processes are not observed individually; only the total numbers of renewals at each time point are observed. Crowder and Stephens (2003, Lifetime Data Anal 9:345-355) implemented a forma...

How does saving lives a f fec t t h e f o r c e of mortality and l ifetable s ta t is t ics? How can t h e p r o g r e s s being made in reducing t h e f o r c e of mortality b e in te rp re ted in terms of lifesaving? How many times can a person e x p e c t t o have his or h e r life saved as a resu l t of th i s p rogress? W e develop a model t o answer these questions and i l lus t ra te t h...

This paper proposes a life-like presentation agent system called TablePresenter. In the TablePresenter, a user edits a table on Microsoft Excel, and also specifies the presentation contents for explaining the table in the form of tree structure, called presentation tree. The system then generates animated presentation by an agent. Presentation trees have intermediate nodes labeled as “contrast”...

Presented analysis of human and fly life tables proves that with the specified accuracy their entire survival and mortality curves are uniquely determined by a single point (e.g., by the birth mortality q(0)), according to the law, which is universal for species as remote as humans and flies. Mortality at any age decreases with the birth mortality q(0). According to life tables, in the narrow v...

"Conventional census-based measures of population mobility are conceptually abstruse, ignore multiple moves and obscure the diversity of human migration experience. This paper explores three alternatives and outlines their strengths and limitations. Application of life table techniques to convert transition rates to migration expectancies generates measures that are more readily understood, aut...

The rapid increase in twinning rates in developed countries has increased interest in the question as to whether twin mothers have higher mortality and more health problems than mothers of singletons. Here we use a national survey, the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study of England & Wales, and a linkage between the Danish Twin Registry and the Danish population register to examin...

Parametric models have been suggested as an alternative to conventional life table techniques for interpretation of observed survival patterns in cancer. This paper extends earlier work on breast cancer by studying the fit of Boag's lognormal model to the survival of 8,170 breast cancer cases reported to the Swedish Cancer Registry during 1961-1963. The model was also used to analyse the upward...